Great for you if you are willing to wait but FYI people for whom this long wait is exasperating aren't necessarily refugees or unable to travel. For myself I'd say I'm worried that we may end up becoming the forgotten cases of 2020 as has been the case for a lot of applicants from 2019. Someone else started a thread about how applications might get delayed as they have been told by CIC over the phone that there is currently a shortage of staff due to the situation in Afghanistan - I guess CIC resources have been temporarily diverted towards prioritizing the refugees from there). Once your case is 'forgotten' it could take years before it's updated again.
(had to register for a new username as I could no longer post under my previous username - messages needed moderator approval how weird!)
I'd take all of that anecdotal information with a great heaping of salt - a lot of it is some extra 'masala'/conjecture sprinkled into a story to drive a narrative. Two months from now, that story will change to 'the CIC agent I spoke to said it was the holiday season, so with the shortage of staff, no applications are being processed'. Early next year, the story will evolve, yet again, to 'since the election happened, there are changes to the government so we're currently in a holding pattern so paperwork will again get delayed'.
I see a lot of this, in the absence of direct, incontrovertible proof like a phone recording or something going on the record to actually state this - as nothing that holds significant reliability. Mind you, Cobie, I'm not calling
you a liar - just that I don't trust those data points are provided to a forum in good faith, but rather projections of what people think are going on based on current news events, disguised as actual data points. I'd steer away from such FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt).
Additionally, we're not talking about the odd one or two cases slipping through the cracks; we're talking of a backlog of almost 108,000 people since January - even if a third of that gets impacted by this and they get into bureaucracy purgatory, the media vultures would have a field day with it. So no, the process is likely to be delayed, but the opacity at this point means that
none of us really know for sure what fires are burning in the IRCC right now. They are also answerable to other departments as part of the process - so unless the CBSA fancies running upwards of 30,000 applicants through their system over and over again like some sort of an infernal carousel because IRCC can't process their applications fast enough before the security checks lapse, I'm pretty sure some government bureaucrat's items would be in a cardboard box with their potted plant and escorted out the door soon enough.